This international workshop will be dedicated to an exploration of the range and scope of contemporary deployments and interrogations of ‘the performative’. Since the publication of J. L. Austin’s How to do Things with Words, the term ‚performativity‘ has been the object of re-contextualisation in and across domains of knowledge with significant and complex effects. Exciting scholarship has emerged in the fields of gender studies, sociology, anthropology, economics, cultural studies, film and media studies, philosophy of science and bioscience, as theories of ‘the performative’ increasingly turn to examine objects of enquiry as diverse as financial markets, new ethnicities, ‘race’ and audit cultures, quantum physics, embodiment and agency in the context of Islamist piety movements, aging and new subjectivities, in addition to ongoing engagements in literary studies.
The workshop will provide an opportunity to trace and reflect upon the plural histories of performativity, Continue reading →

On 21 September 2007, the European Journal of Women’s Studies (based at the Gender Institute) is sponsoring a symposium “Gendering the Academy” to commemorate over a decade devoted to publishing cutting-edge feminist scholarship and to say farewell to its founding editor, Mary Evans. In the broadest and most passionate way, several well-known feminist academics will provide a scrapbook of personal and political observations about where academic feminism has been and where it is going in the future. Speakers are Sarah Franklin, Val Hey, Kate Reed, Bev Skeggs, Liz Stanley, and Sue Yeandle.
Time: 10.00-18.30
Place: LSE (New Theatre)
Further Information and Reservations: Hazel Johnstone: h.johnstone[at]lse.ac.uk

Zeit: 25.10.2007
Ort: Berlin Humboldt-Universität
5. Jahrestagung der „Konferenz der Einrichtungen für Frauen- und Geschlechterstudien im deutschsprachigen Raum“. Das Zentrum für transdisziplinäre Geschlechterstudien (ZtG) der Humboldt-Universität Berlin (HU) plant anlässlich des 10-jährigen Bestehens des Gender-Studies-Studiengangs an der HU eine wissenschaftliche Tagung, die mit der 5. Jahrestagung der „Konferenz der Einrichtungen für Frauen- und Geschlechterstudien im deutschsprachigen Raum“ verbunden werden soll. Es ist das Anliegen des ZtG, die bisher gemachten Erfahrungen zu bilanzieren und die Perspektiven unserer weiteren Arbeit zu diskutieren und die Kräfte und Diskussionszusammenhänge der bestehenden Netzwerke zu bündeln. Continue reading →

RGS-IBG Annual International Conference 2007: ‚Sustainability and Quality of Life‘
Zeit: 28.-31.08.2007
Ort: Royal Geographical Society with IBG / London / United Kingdom
Convenors: Gavin Brown and Jenny Pickerill
Sponsored by: the Participatory Geographies Working Group and the Space, Sexualities and Queer Working Group
Recent years have seen an expanded interest within Geography in the spatiality of emotions (Davidson, Bondi and Smith 2005) and affect (Thrift 2004); as well as the spaces of activism, protest and resistance (Routledge 2003; Featherstone 2003; and Anderson 2004).
Outside Geography, various scholars have begun to consider the emotions that inspire and sustain activism, and that are provoked by it (Godwin, Jasper and Polleta 2001; Cvetkovich 2003; Flam and King 2005). This session seeks to draw together recent geographic scholarship on emotions, affect and activism to consider how they might productively inform each other. It seeks to offer a spatial and geographic perspective to other social scientific enquiries into the connections between emotions and social movement activism. Continue reading →